Monthly archives for September, 2013

Hello, everybody. Your classic movie guys back again with a special treat, another in our six-part series devoted to Allan Dwan.

As critic-columnist Dave Kehr of The New York Times noted in May, it’s looking to be a good year for the pioneer American filmmaker, who began directing in 1911, and worked without a break for half a century.

His extraordinary career is the subject of an exhaustively researched recent biography by Fredric Lombardi. The book — “Allan Dwan and the Rise and Decline of the Hollywood Studios” – is published by McFarland. For more information, click on the title.

Lombardi’s book was the basis of a full-fledged retrospective on Dwan’s work that was staged at New York’s Museum of Modern Art this summer.

Joe particularly likes three farces which Dwan directed for Edward Small in the mid-forties. Up in Mabel’s Room, Getting Gertie’s Garter, and Brewster’s Millions. All were released by United Artists.

But by the early fifties Dwan had changed his genre of films, yet again.

Here’s Fred.

“When Dwan joined RKO Pictures in 1954, the company was reeling from five years of mismanagement from owner Howard Hughes. All of the films RKO was releasing were now coming from independent producers.

Among these producers was Benedict Bogeaus. Knowing of Bogeaus’ erratic tendencies, RKO president, and Dwan friend, JamesGrainger assigned Dwan to work with Bogeaus to keep things under control.

Despite initial tensions, the two men wound up making ten films together. As Dwan recalled, “I went in as a policeman and ended up friendly with him.”

Four of their collaborations are arguably among the best movies Dwan made during the sound era though they were largely ignored by critics of the time.

The four films share common themes and plot elements that evolve over the series.

Today we’ll the discuss the first two, Silver Lode (1954) and Tennessee’s Partner (1955). Both are Westerns and it could be said that Tennessee’s Partner looks like a sequel to Silver Lode.

The plot of the first film concerns an upstanding citizen (JohnPayne) who is accused of murder and stealing by a man (DanDuryea) entering the town claiming to be a U.S. marshal. Payne says that his accuser is an imposter, who is actually a criminal.

The townspeople initially defend Payne but over the course of the film Duryea manages to turn everyone against him. Soon Payne is being hunted down in the streets to be shot on sight. Payne’s only support comes from two women (Lizabeth Scott and Dolores Moran).

Given that the marshal’s name is “McCarty” and his accusations prove to be baseless, Silver Lode has in subsequent years been seen as an allegory of the McCarthy anti-Communist witch hunts of the 1950s.

In fact, the scriptwriter Karen De Wolf had a radical past and Silver Lode would be her last film credit.

Dwan told a French interviewer that he preferred to see the film as a satire of a hypocritical small town rather than as a political work. Silver Lode can also be seen as a precursor to the fifties paranoid classics The Phenix City Story and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.

Payne’s character in Silver Lode becomes embittered at the fickleness of the townspeople.

In the next film, Tennessee’sPartner, Payne plays the gambler Tennessee who owns a gambling establishment, and is hated by the community. The now cynical Tennessee has decided that it is “good for business” to have the threat of people taking potshots at him.

Tennessee’s life is saved by a stranger known only as “Cowpoke” (Ronald Reagan, pictured above with Payne) who is as idealistic as Tennessee is cynical. The two men become close friends as Reagan gives what is one of his best screen performances.

Through the friendship of Tennessee and Cowpoke the story becomes a fable with both a tragic and happy ending. A haunting and beautifully composed shot by Dwan provides the transition between these final two scenes.

Last month we were discussing Gregory Peck and his western films. But reader SamuelCochran wrote in about Peck’s film debut in Days Of Glory with Russian ballerina, TamaraToumanova.

Taumanova is, in fact, one of Joe’s favorites. He admits she wasn’t much of an actress, but then she was good enough and, of course, she was alway portraying a ballerina.

After her debut in Days of Glory she was off the screen for nine years. Then in 1953 she portrayed Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova in Tonight We Sing, and in 1954 she played Gaby Deslys in the biographical musical Deep in My Heart.

Her best film is probably Gene Kelly’sInvitation to the Dance in 1956, where no acting was involved. Then she was off the screen again for 10 years before appearing as the ballerina in Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain.

Joe thinks it’s great that folks such as Samuel remember her. Samuel also turned us on to a fabulous documentary — Ballet Russe. It’s worth checking out.

In the documentary many dancers from the company — then in their 70′s, 80′s and 90′s — were interviewed. Although Toumanova was gone by the time the documentary was done in 2005, the other baby ballerinas Samuel mentioned in his letter, Tatiana Riabouchinska, and Irina Baronova, were interviewed for the documentary. See it.

Lombardi is a friend of Classic Movie Chat, and we were most pleased that his book prompted (and was the basis of) a full-fledged retrospective on Dwan’s work that was staged at New York’s Museum of Modern Art from June 5 through July 8.

Fred has kindly agreed to adapt portions of his new book into six guest blogs for us. Here’s he is with the next contribution to our series, this one about John Wayne starring in one of the most famous war films of all time:

“Allan Dwan made his most famous movie SANDS OF IWO JIMA (1949) at the least-esteemed film studio he worked for in the sound era.

Known for cranking out B movies and cliffhanger serials, Republic was derisively referred to as “Repulsive Pictures.” However, by the mid-1940s Republic was trying to do some upgrading.

SANDS OF IWO JIMA was the brainchild of Republic producer Edmund Grainger who felt that a major film needed to be made about the contributions of the U.S. Marines.

John Wayne was cast in the lead role of Sgt. Stryker, and it was a sign of his rising power that Wayne was able to bring in his own writer (James Edward Grant) to re-write the script which had begun as a forty-page treatment by Grainger before being turned into a screenplay by Harry Brown (A WALK IN THE SUN).

The central figure of SANDS OF IWO JIMA is Wayne’s Sgt. John Stryker whose toughness alienates him from most of the men in his squad. By the film’s end Stryker is revealed to be a man plagued by his own inner doubts, and who hides his own concern for his men.

While the tough sergeant with the heart of gold is a cliché, there is another component to Stryker’s character. His wife had left him a decade ago, taking their infant son with her. Stryker now waits in vain for his son to respond to his letters, and for all purposes his son is lost to him.

Stryker had named his son Sam after Col. Sam Conway who was his C.O. and who was killed at Guadalcanal. When Stryker learns that one of the recruits in his squad (John Agar) is Conway’s son, Stryker becomes unusually solicitous to him. But the young Conway rebuffs Stryker’s offer of friendship. Conway has joined the Marines because of his father’s death but is still bitter because he believes his father considered him too soft.

Stryker and Conway are each painfully reeling when they meet and both see in each other the chance to resume the father-son relationship they had lost. In doing so, their former conflicts are re-played.

This aspect of the story did not originate with Dwan. But Dwan’s direction helped to bring an intensity to this relationship, and Wayne would here win his first Oscar nomination. In this brief blog I have chosen to emphasize this aspect because it was a personal obsession of Dwan’s.

Dwan was destined to be childless, and a particularly traumatic incident in his younger days caused him to bring this element into his work. As early as 1914 he began to make films emphasizing the role of a “lost father.”

Often these were fathers would could not reveal their paternity to their offspring but several variations developed over the years. Probably the most bizarre of Dwan’s “lost fathers” was portrayed by Eddie Albert in the satiricial comedy RENDEZVOUS WITH ANNIE (1946) and like much else that Dwan did, it is ripe for rediscovery.”

As part of our star-of-the-week series, we recently profiled Adolphe Menjou, a fine actor whose career spanned the silents and the talkies, 149 film and tv titles in all beginning way back in 1914. (Star of the Week — Adolphe Who?, Aug. 26.)

Somewhat to our surprise, the response (for us) was voluminous. The comments came pouring in.

And, since we love reader email, we take pleasure today in publishing some of the feedback, which notes that Menjou was by no means universally beloved for his far right political views.

Regular contributor Patricia Nolan-Hall (Caftan Women) writes:

Myrna Loy (according to her autobiography) was quite prepared to dislike Adolphe Menjou because of their differing political views, but when they worked together in “The Ambassador’s Daughter” she actually found him a charming and delightful fellow.

In his autobiography, Pat O’Brien speaks of appearing with Menjou in “The Front Page”. Menjou replaced Louis Wolheim after his sudden death. O’Brien said that everyone was quite prepared to dislike the interloper, but Menjou proved himself to be “one of the boys” and won them over.

Another regular contributor, Mike Sheridan, writes in a similar vein:

(Menjou) must be listed as an All Time Great. I think of him as a real movie star. His political views only come up now because Hollywood is sooo left (still). I absolutely loved him with Gary Cooper in (1932′s) “A Farewell to Arms”. If AM is in it, im watchin!

This from reader Danny: I just wrote up a bit about Menjou because of his part in (director Frank) Capra’s “Forbidden,” another movie where he turns in an excellent performance. I look forward to seeing where you’re going this week.

When we figure it out, Danny, we’ll let you know. Thanks for asking.

Finally, this from Vincent:

Menjou apparently was a candidate to play newspaper editor Oliver Stone(!) in 1937′s “Nothing Sacred” with Carole Lombard (like the ’37 “A Star Is Born,” a Selznick International production), but he either backed out or had another studio assignment — he received lots of work — and reliable character actor Walter Connolly portrayed Stone instead. (Menjou and Lombard never made a film together; though Carole, a New Deal/FDR backer, worked with a number of Republicans over the years, including Robert Montgomery, none were as so far to the right as Menjou.)

Your noting NoelCoward brought to mind a story about him and Menjou relayed by Orson Welles in the recently-released “My Lunches With Orson” (a terrific read, BTW). Since you’re listing Menjou as star of the week, I won’t list it here for fear of robbing you of a potential future entry.

Seems, according to Welles, that Menjou encountered Coward in Northern Africa during a World War II USO tour. Menjou was talking about how terrible it was in England, that those “n—–” soldiers were fucking all the English girls, and you didn’t know what kind of race it was gonna be.

“Isn’t that true, Noel?”, asked Menjou.

“What?” Noel said, ”At last there’ll be a race of Englishmen with good teeth.”

Recently we challenged you with a quiz centered largely on the early career of one of the most amazingly productive people in show business, actor/producer/director Clint Eastwood.

Ok, without further verbal folderol, here are the answers to our quizlet. (In putting together this exercise, we are indebted to author Marc Eliot’s useful 2009 biography, American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood, Three Rivers Press.)

Question: When exactly did Eastwood make his movie debut, and what is the title of the movie? Can you also name the star of that movie?

Answer: Eastwood played the (uncredited) part of a lab technician in 1955′s Revenge of the Creature, released in 3D and starring Shirley Temple’s former husband, John Agar. Triva bonus: Eastwood also appeared with Carol Channing, of all people, in 1956′s The First Traveling Saleslady.

Question: Eastwood was fired by the first big Hollywood studio he worked for because “he just didn’t have the right look.” Two other actors were also canned at the same time, both going on to prominent careers. Who were the two other actors? 1) Troy Donahue; 2) Tony Curtis; 3) Burt Reynolds; or 4) David Janssen.

Answer: Reynolds and Janssen. The latter was let go by the studio because of his “receding hairline and distracting facil tics” while execs felt Reynolds “couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag.”

Question: Eastwood’s first big break came not in the movies but on TV in the CBS western series Rawhide that ran for seven years beginning in 1959. But he almost lost the role of Rowdy Yates to another actor, the father of a current Hollywood star. Who was Clint’s competitor? 1) EricFleming; 2) Bing Russell; 3) Lee Van Cleef; or 4) Robert Ryan.

Answer: Neil “Bing” Russell, the father of actor Kurt Russell. The senior Russell later found a longtime perch on the Bonanza TV series.

Question: By now, Eastwood’s skills as a pianist/composer are well known, but in his earlier days he was known also as a singer. Can you name the first record he ever made?

Answer: To cash in on his Rawhide popularity, Eastwood in 1961 was persuaded to record a single comprising “Unknown Girl” backed by a cover version of “For All We Know.” His singing wasn’t bad, leading to a subsequent album, Rawhide’s Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favorites.

Question: Eastwood was definitely the star of Rawhide. True or false.

Answer: False. The star of the show was Eric Fleming, an actor hardly remembered today. No one got more career mileage from the show than did Eastwood.

Question: While he was making the movie version of Paint Your Wagon in the late Sixties, Eastwood had an affair with a costar who had carved out a career in Europe. Can you name her? 1) Annabella; 2) Michele Morgan; 3) Jean Seberg; or 4) Leslie Caron.

Answer: It was an “on location” romance with Jean Seberg, which ended when the movie did.

Question: Moving ahead a bit in time, can you name the two actors offered the plum role of police inspector Harry Callahan in 1971′s Dirty Harry, before Eastwood? 1) PaulNewman; 2) Edmond O’Brien; 3) Frank Sinatra; or Robert Redford.

Answer: Newman and Sinatra. Newman didn’t like what he felt to be the movie’s political slant. Sinatra begged off claiming a hand injury.

Answer: Two. First was Maggie Johnson from 1953 to 1984, then former TV reporter Dina Ruiz, 1996 to the present (although the couple has supposedly separated). Let’s just say Eastwood’s personal life has been complicated right up there with Elizabeth Taylor’s. In all, he has sired seven children by five women including actress Frances Fisher. His longtime childless romance with actress-director Sondra Locke was certainly the most legally contentious.

Hello, everybody. Your classic movie guys back again with a special treat, another in our six-part series devoted to Allan Dwan.

As critic-columnist Dave Kehr of The New York Times noted in May –His extraordinary career is the subject of an exhaustively researched recent biography by Fredric Lombardi. The book is titled Allan Dwan and the Rise and Decline of the Hollywood Studios, published by McFarland, 2013.

The book prompted (and was the basis of) a full-fledged retrospective Dwan’s work that was staged at New York’s Museum of Modern Art from June 5 through July 8.

Fred has kindly agreed to adapt portions of his new book into six guest blogs for us. Here’s he is with another in our series, this one about Douglas Fairbanks Sr.

Here’s Fred.

Douglas Fairbanks Sr. was the first megastar hero of the movies.

Fairbanks appeared at a time when there was much anxiety about masculine values and the loss of individualism as men had moved from working on farms to factories and offices. A formula of transformation was set in Fairbanks’ early movies as the hapless male lead would learn to become a hero.

His films often had a tongue-in-cheek quality and reviews usually referred to the star as a “comedian.”

Thus, the basics of his screen persona were already established when Fairbanks made his first film with Allan Dwan, THE HABIT OFHAPPINESS (1916). The best of the four Dwan/Doug movies of 1916 was MANHATTAN MADNESS with fast-paced editing unusual for its time and a thoroughly playful and ingenious plot.

Having performed briefly as a quarterback for Notre Dame, Dwan was well-qualified to help plan the elaborate physical stunts of the Fairbanks movies.

Fairbanks was a savvy producer who assumed creative control of his films, but he and Dwan were also congenial collaborators and they made ten films together, more than Doug made with any other director.

There was a bitter split between Dwan and Fairbanks with the director apparently walking off the set of one of their films in 1918.

Fairbanks was then under pressure as his marriage was crumbling while he carried on an affair with Mary Pickford. The rupture was acrimonious enough that the usually placid Dwan confessed to an interviewer that he had later suffered a nervous breakdown.

Meanwhile, there was a coming sea change in Fairbanks’ career as he turned to making elaborate swashbucklers with THE MARK OF ZORRO (1920) and THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1921).

Doug and Dwan would re-unite to make the 1922 ROBIN HOOD.

Hollywood was then in the doldrums following the Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle scandal, and a year long economic depression had settled over the country.

Since both Fairbanks and Dwan had a hand in the script, it is not surprising that the plot centered on the friendship between Robin and King Richard that was soured by a misunderstanding.

ROBIN HOOD proved to be a smash success that helped revive the film industry.

Dwan and Fairbanks then went their separate ways until Doug called his director friend back one last time to work on THE IRON MASK (1929).

The silent film era was then drawing to a close and at the age of forty-five Doug would soon to be too old to demonstrate athletic prowess. This was an energetic film with an elegiac and mystical ending that celebrated all that was transcendent in human beings.

Dwan and Doug had worked from outlines rather than finished scripts, improvising on the set. But with the emergence of the sound era and detailed scripts with dialogue, that freedom was ending.

Fairbanks would make no more swashbucklers, and after 1934, no more films at all. He would die in late 1939 at the age of 56, a little more than a decade after the release of THE IRON MASK.

Can Clint Eastwood be considered a “classic movie actor,” that is, and star from Hollywood’s classic era?

Yes, he is still very much with us (age 83) and still working (with two projects in preparation). Yet, we believe that the very early part of his career belongs to the later, quickly winding down classic movie period.

That’s why we put together this quiz centered largely on that earlier period of his amazingly productive professional life.

Not to draw too bold a line under it, but Eastwood certainly belongs in the top rank of the most powerful figures ever in Hollywood, whose combined skills as a director (37 titles) and producer (38) more than match his acting roles (66).

At one time not too long ago, Eastwood was solely responsible for generating nearly 20% of the yearly income of one studio, Warner Bros. Not too many classic stars can make that claim at anytime.

As mentioned, this quizlet will challenge your knowledge of early Eastwood. Go ahead, make your day, and we wish you bonne chance. (In putting together this exercise, we are indebted to author Marc Eliot’s useful 2009 biography, American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood, Three Rivers Press.)

Question: When exactly did Eastwood make his movie debut, and what is the title of the movie? Can you also name the star of that movie?

Question: Eastwood was fired by the first big Hollywood studio he worked for because “he just didn’t have the right look.” Two other actors were also canned at the same time, both going on to prominent careers. Who were the two other actors? 1) Troy Donahue; 2) Tony Curtis; 3) Burt Reynolds or 4) David Janssen.

Question: Eastwood’s first big break came not in the movies but on tv in CBS’ western series, Rawhide, that ran for seven years beginning in 1959. But he almost lost the role to another actor, the father of a current Hollywood star. Who was Clint’s competitor? 1) EricFleming; 2) Bing Russell; 3) Lee Van Cleef; or 4) Robert Ryan.

Question: By now, Eastwood’s skills as a pianist/composer are well known, but in his earlier days he was known also as a singer. Can you name the first vocal record he ever made?

Question: Eastwood was definitely the star of Rawhide. True or false.

Question: While he was making the movie version of Paint Your Wagon in the late Sixties, Eastwood had an affair with a costar, who had carved out a career in Europe. Can you name her? 1) Annabella; 2) Michele Morgan; 3) Jean Seberg; or 4) Leslie Caron.

Question: Moving ahead a bit in time, can you name the two actors offered the plum role of police inspector Harry Callahan in 1971′s Dirty Harry, before Eastwood? 1) PaulNewman; 2) Edmond O’Brien; 3) Frank Sinatra; or Robert Redford.

Yes, they both worked for most of their careers at 20th Century Fox. Tyrone Power was perhaps the studio’s biggest star of the late Thirties and Forties, and Don Ameche was perhaps its most reliable go-to personality.

Hello, everybody. Your classic movie guys here today to pleasurably field reader e-mail about both Power (the subject of our TYRONE POWER Quiz, Aug. 21, with answers following on Aug. 29 and Aug. 30) and Ameche, profiled in our Who Was Don Ameche??, Aug. 28.

Our piece on Ameche inspired this affectionate and informative communique from Mark:

I’ve always liked Don Ameche, and would like to mention that he had a pleasant baritone singing voice and, among other successes as a “vocalist,” introduced the lovely Irving Berlin ballad “Now It Can Be Told” in 1938′s “ALEXANDER’S RAGTIME BAND.”

He also starred on Broadway in Cole Porter’s “SILK STOCKINGS” in the role played in the 1957 film version by Fred Astaire.

As an indication of Ameche’s great success in “THE STORY OF ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL,” take note of a line in 1941?s “BALL OF FIRE” in which nightclub singer (and gangster’s moll) Barbara Stanwyck tries to stop professor Gary Cooper from evicting her from the house where he and the other professors reside, by proving to him how much Cooper needs her to complete his study of contemporary American slang.

Stanwyck asks Cooper something like, “For instance would you know what it means when someone says: “Get him for me on the ‘Ameche’?” Cooper looks puzzled and Stanwyck says, “You know, the telephone, ’cause he invented it.” When Cooper starts to correct her, Stanwyck interrupts and says: “You know, in the movie!”

Interesting trivia: In the 1943 Broadway production “ONE TOUCH OF VENUS,” which provided Hollywood reject Mary Martin with her first smash hit as a Broadway star, one of the Kurt Weil/Ogden Nash songs, “Wooden Wedding,” has Kenny Baker’s humble barber imagining married life in suburbia with Martin’s earthbound goddess.

As he imagines the simple pleasures they’ll enjoy as a couple, one of them is “a double feature with Don Ameche.”

With a long and happy marriage and family life, his late in life Oscar win and a successful career that encompassed many venues of entertainment over a long life, Ameche was one “nice guy” who apparently, finished “first.”

Thanks so much, Mark. We couldn’t agree more.

From The Lady Eve comes this about Power’s first wife, the French actress Annabella:

Annabella’s American movie career was derailed by her marriage to Tyrone Power – which was against (Fox mogul) Darryl F. Zanuck’s wishes.

Zanuck was her boss as well as Power’s. When she and Ty divorced, she got a huge settlement. I suppose she must’ve felt it was her due since she gave up her career for him and their marriage hadn’t stopped him from regularly romancing his leading ladies, falling in love with the likes of Judy (Garland) and Lana (Turner) and seducing the occasional starlet along the way.

Today there are many film and TV stars who are considered famous, but in 30 or 40 years they will be almost totally forgotten.

Think not?

Then consider Dennis Morgan.

Never heard of him, right? A pity since he was once one of Hollywood’s leading romantic actors with an appealingly light touch in musicals and comedies with occasional western or drama appearances thrown in.

His many costars were some of the classic era’s most memorable figures including GingerRogers, Barbara Stanwyck, Eleanor Parker, Doris Day and Sydney Greenstreet.

His name was right up there, rivaling to some extent the star power of the likes of the ubiquitous Joan Crawford. His name above the title could certainly help carry a picture. In short, he was no lightweight.

But why does Morgan’s name fail to come tripping from the tongue when prominent classic performers are recalled? One of life’s many mysteries, we guess.

Born Earl Stanley Morner in Wisconsin in 1908, he made his first Hollywood movie in the mid-1930′s, and continued making films and tv productions (nearly 80 in total) until his retirement in 1980, 14 years before he died at 85.

A former singer, he fit right in with the kind of light musicals Warner Bros. churned out in the Forties including 1947′s My Wild Irish Rose, the biography of Irish singer ChaunceyOlcott. He was directed by Raoul Walsh in the 1947 western, Cheyenne, playing (opposite Jane Wyman) a stage coach robber with a poetic bent.

1949′s It’s a Great Feeling teamed him with a young Doris Day and an actor who would become a frequent Morgan sidekick, Jack Carson, another unjustly overlooked actor.

Carson is spared Morgan’s contemporary obscurity if only for his amiably sleazy businessman turn as “Wally Fay” — his finest role — in the 1945 version of Mildred Pierce. That classic showcased him as a star going toe-to-toe with Joan Crawford with Carson holding his own impressively.

Morgan, by nature a “light” actor, had no such dramatic breakthrough. He came across as a handsome charmer with good humor and manners to match, a genuinely nice guy with a pleasant singing voice.

If you see only one Morgan film make it 1943′s The Hard Way, in which he costars with Ida Lupino, Joan Leslie and his pal, Jack Carson. Directed by Vincent Sherman, it’s a stage-mom-on-the-loose melodrama with music.

Offscreen, the actor was the model of domestic stability, married to his wife Lillian Vedder for 61 years. Should we be cynical enough to suggest that no temperament, no scandal, no angst equals no star-name longevity?

It isn’t often one can view a classic movie on a big screen in a real movie theater. One of the few places that can happen is at the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto California.

Luckily for Joe he gets to Palo Alto several times a year and can attend films at the Stanford, films which come with live Organ introductions, just as if you were back in the 1930s.

Recently he was there for the screening of two Deanna Durbin films, First Love and Christmas Holiday.

First Love is quintessential Durbin fare, a modern day cinderella story and the film that’s famous because in it Deanna received her first screen kiss. It co-stars Robert Stack (the kisser), Eugene Pallette, Leatrice Joy and Helen Parrish.

It might be hard for anyone who isn’t a Durbin fan to sit through. But it’s fun if you’re in the moment. And the ending is a classic–Deanna singing Un bel di from Madame Butterfly.

The Stanford Theatre program informed us that Lotfi Mansouri, former General Director of San Francisco Opera, reported that he first discovered Puccini as a teenager in his native Iran — sung by Deanna Durbin.

Actually, Joe had gone to the double bill to see the second feature which he’d only read about, Christmas Holiday.

Now in 1944 when a film co-starred Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly one would think the moviegoer had a right to expect light musical fare — especially with Christmas in the title. But this film with a script by Herman J. Mankiewicz based on a novel by Somerset Maugham, is a film noir directed by Robert Siodmak.

Joe thought he knew what to expect, but even he was surprised. Kelly gives a chilling performance as a slightly crazy murderer. Gale Sondergaard, the superb character actress plays his possesive and protective mother. Durbin is a bit out of her element but is enough of an actress to make the material work.

But the material is a bit confused. As was typical for the day the censors wouldn’t let our lead character be a prostitute in a brothel, so Deanna is a singer/hostess in a nightclub.

It’s worth seeing the film at least once. It’s such an oddity. Supposedly Durbin considered it her only good film.

What strikes us is that today it is difficult to measure the star power Deanna Durbin had. Although some fans and some critics were displeased with her choice of material, they were still loyal. The film grossed over $2,000,000 making it one of the highest grossing films of the year and her biggest grosser to date. In today’s dollars it would be equivalent to the film grossing over $100 million.